I was told recently about a 3-year old we know that has never thrown up until this week. Never. The burning question in my mind upon hearing this news: Where do I get one of those kids?
While I feel bad for the child because is must be disconcerting to throw up for the first time when you are so cognizant, it is mind boggling to me that a kid could eat, sleep, ride in the car, take medicine for three years and not throw up. Is that even possible?
Between us, Dave, the grandmothers, and I have cleaned up countless gallons of vomit. Vomit is so much a part of our daily lives that we actually have rules about it.
1. No fingers in your mouth. (This one prevents accidental vomit when she is exploring too deeply with all four fingers.)
2. If you throw up, you will clean it up. (This sounds harsh, but when you have a kid who can vomit at will, you have to do something to deter it.)
3. You must eat something before we ride in the car in the mornings. (Otherwise, she will throw up, typically as we turn into the parking lot wherever we are going.)
4. You must eat something before you take yucky medicine. (This rule was added just this morning when the yucky stuff bounced right off the bottom of her stomach, back up her throat, and onto my kitchen floor. This counts as Lesson 3 in the Second Medicine Wars.)
5. If you throw up your medicine, you just have to take it again. (See #4 above).
6. No opening the diaper can and sniffing it. (Yes, she does this and her sensitive gag reflex can't handle it.)
Vomit started early and often in EGR's life. Read here for our experience in The Evil Place when my very young baby puked so much that we had to have the lady with the mop clean it up. When she was merely an infant, she got car sick and still does. We've gone to great lengths to prevent and prepare for vomit. We've drugged her with Benadryl (it works). We keep a vomit cup in the car. In cold weather we put her jacket on backward over her carseat straps so we just have to shed one layer to clean up, and we keep an extra in the car. We always have a change of clothes for her. We've developed efficient techniques for cleaning puke out of the carseat buckles. We've trained her to puke in the cup, in the toilet, leaning over the hard floor with her feet spread wide so it doesn't get on her. We recognize the cough that means it's coming up, even if she's sleeping deeply. She pukes when she's riding, when she swings too long, when she smells something nasty too early in the morning, when she has sinus drainage, when the medicine is just too yucky, when she melts down completely, when she's in full tantrum - the possibilities are endless, really. Inevitably, if she has eaten shrimp (and she eats piles of it), she throws up later that night for some reason or another (No, it's not because she's allergic to shrimp, it's just coincidence.)
Even Luke, in his long 8 weeks, has thrown up on me so many times I've lost count. And, if the kids aren't throwing up, the cats or the dog leave a pile for us to find. Indeed, vomit is a part of our daily lives. It's so routine that it would take lots and lots of persistent vomit to for me to even consider that one of them might have a virus. Ironically, stomach virus is not one of the reasons Ella has ever thrown up.
Stay tuned for the next installment: Babies Who Don't Spit Up: What's that about?
No comments:
Post a Comment